Last night I drank something called barium sulfate. It looked to be about a quart of the stuff. It was not as bad as I remember from the barium swallow days. It was rather minty. But it was still barium sulfate.

I did this on orders from OncoMan, and it was sort of like receiving an audit notice from the IRS, just as painful in the same psychic sort of way and from someone I hadn’t thought about for a while. You know, you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, but you feel guilty just the same? Similar deal here: I don’t think anything is wrong but I am concerned nonetheless.

It was a prelude to a CAT Scan performed earlier today, which makes it understandable, except that I cannot remember ever taking this stuff before for a CAT Scan, and I have had countless CAT Scans, all of them, I think, with contrast involved. However, it is typically injected while I am hanging out in the tube (okay lying in the tube, not hanging out, geez!).

I drank the barium sulfate last night and woke dark and early this morning and headed for the big hospital, with my wife following in her car, since she would be staying for the day in order to provide us with steady income and a great source for future recommendations re doctors, if ever needed. She met me in the admissions joint, where the guy was just getting around to asking me if I had drunk my two bottles of barium sulfate (I think they call it dye, or contrast, I’m not sure which. Frankly, if I worked in a hospital, I would NOT call anything dye, if you know what I mean and I think you do, but that’s just me.).

If you have been paying attention, you will wonder why I didn’t mention the second bottle of barium sulfate before now. That would be a discerning catch. I did not mention the second bottle of barium sulfate because I did not know about the second bottle of barium sulfate and therefore did not drink the second bottle of barium sulfate, which resides comfortably, still, as I write this, on the kitchen counter.

My wife said “You know, at the stoplight at South Boulevard I thought of that and then thought, “Oh, he must have taken it!”. We will not discuss my thoughts. This is a family show.

In any case, I eventually found my way into Radiology Room, and was offered another bottle of barium sulfate, this time with a straw, as if it were a milkshake.

As if!

I sucked it down pretty quickly, dismissing the straw entirely, and my wife, in an aside, suggested that it is amazing how previously learned life skills come to the forefront when you least expect them. In response to my quizzical look, she replied, “You guzzled that down like it was beer.”

Funny girl.

I finally got into CAT Land and onto the slab that slides into the tube. CatManDude did what he does, sticking me in the vein, not once but twice, and offering that I was probably dehydrated, which was his way of shifting the blame to me, I suspect, and each stick felt worse than the previous. I am here to tell you that if you get stuck enough times, unlike other things in life, it does not get easier. You come to dread it, you want to avoid it, and it really starts to hurt. But do not worry until after about the 1,000th jab. Then you can start worrying. (You might also be eligible for a free toaster, though, so what the hell?)

And I am being a baby, of course.

But it did hurt.

I’m just saying.

It turns out I was made to swallow the barium sulfate because OncoMan, in his infinite wisdom, decided that I needed not just a head/neck scan, not just a head/neck and chest scan, but a head/neck, chest and abdominal/pelvic exam. This will worry me eventually. For now, I am glad that he is covering all bases (well, except for toe cancer).

What these people do not know because no one in their right minds would cart around the entirety of my growing medical chart is that just prior to my last cancer diagnosis, I was scheduled to get some surgery for a torn rotator cuff. To be followed by another in the opposing arm. I put this off so that I could play golf until the season ended, only to be detoured by the lung junk. I bring this up only because they made me lift my arms over my head, as is the usual case, and keep them there, as is the usual case, forever, which is not the usual case.

It begins to hurt after awhile. I am not being a baby on this one, folks. It begins to really hurt, and they don’t know, and being a stubborn male I do not report my duress, instead choosing to follow my orders to HOLD YOUR BREATH…BREATHE…HOLD YOUR BREATHE…BREATHE… I wonder what would happen to me if the voice thing stopped working between HOLD YOUR BREATH and BREATHE? I would probably die from stupidity .

Here is something else: I have been told not to eat from midnight right up through the scan. I am a person who really, since all of this began, needs to eat, needs to have something in the belly in the morning. Otherwise, I am sort of shaky. Yes, before you ask, they have checked my insulin levels and all of that, especially during the staph infection episode, and I am not diabetic, or so they say, but I get shaky, really shaky, and it is not DTs either, so do not go there.

Being advised to be very still while in the catacomb has the exact opposite effect that was intended, I believe. Before CatManDude said that, I was quite complacent. After he said it, I was shaking like a leaf, or thought I was. I am fairly certain that the head/neck image is going to be one blurry furry fellow, frankly.

I did survive, of course. It is not painful, even when the IV is stretched to its limits as you reach the far end while they scan your pelvis. It is not painful, even though you might be on Coumadin, a blood thinner, and bound to bleed to death if they get the stick-and-wrap wrong. It is not even a problem if you are claustrophobic. No. All of the scary stuff comes later: the next day, the next week, when OncoMan looks at the pictures and tells you what he sees.

It is like being on a game show. OncoMan is the host, OncoMan is the guy who waits that extra moment, building suspense, before telling you, “You live!”.

I have a CAT scan scheduled for tomorrow. This does not mean I will make it, but I will do my best.

If I have ever had a night-before drink of whatever to go with it, I do not remember such an occasion (a medical drink, I mean). Tonight I will drink some stuff and not eat or drink again until after the CAT scan. I am not sure they know that I have to eat. It is something I do to survive, and I am on a timer, frankly.

Not in terms of survival, but in terms of eating.

Then again, we are all on a timer, aren’t we?

That is a digression.

I have a CAT scan scheduled for tomorrow morning. It is not a problem. It is what it is.

I have a niggling little issue, I must admit. The last time I had a little cough, I had to pretty much insist that I get a scan, and when I did, they said I had 10 months to live, more or less, they being OncoMan.

They were wrong, of course, because I am still here, but I have this very strong sense that he is a much smarter man than I have given him credit for (and I really think he is a smart guy, by the way), and this time he will say “Hah! Told you so!”

I do not know why that is. But I have that feeling.

Right now, the wind is raging. It is howling, to be honest. I can hear it buffet against the gutters and the shutters. It seems like a bad omen.

I probably should have referenced Ray Wylie Hubbard’s Snake Ranch here. I had a snake on my hands, after all. The new PEG tube, such as it was, lounged, at its end, down around my knees or thereabouts. And it had no features. I had to add my own.

And then my stomach did what stomachs do and began to suck the tube inside of itself. I did not know at first. I experienced cramps, severe cramps. To make that long story short, I finally realized that I was no longer suffering PEG tube envy because there was only about a foot of that olive tube left out in public. The rest was buried inside of me somewhere. Genius that I am, I began pulling on the tube, and it began to come out. And it came out. And then more came out. Pretty soon, I was feeling good again, and most of the tube was back out in the open where it belonged. I realized that without a bumper on the tube, my stomach would be just as happy to swallow the whole thing.

I scheduled some time in the OR, and in there I got to see the magic at work. No pain, by the way. I was wide-awake with no drugs. They had an ultrasound machine over top of me, and I was wrapped like Dustin Hoffman in a virus epidemic movie, but there was no problem.

In truth, the nurses and the intern/resident did all of the work. The hoity-toity Doc came in at the last minute, verified all was cool, and left. That’s why he gets the big bucks. But I enjoyed the company of the intern/resident and the nurses. They let me know it was no big deal, despite the fact I was wrapped in a cocoon of blue Saran wrap-type stuff nearly from head to toe, and even though they did one foolish thing, assuming that the olive drab piece was correctly placed, overall they did a great job, and that replacement lasted until exactly yesterday.

This time, it didn’t exactly fall out. A certain knowledgeable person of my acquaintance decided to tape my dressing, and I am not used to that, so when I acted to replace that dressing, I just started pulling it away, forgetting the tape, and out came the PEG tube. It did not hurt. Physically. Mentally, I said a number of things, to myself, about myself, and stuck the tube back in. I am not sure that is a good idea for all of you folks at home. I am a professional PEG tube-sticker-back-inner. Do not try this at home!

I was surprised that it went in so easily, frankly, and thought to myself, well, then, maybe we have averted a crisis. But I could feel the difference and knew that I was lying to myself, if in fact I was believing myself (I am a professional liar…Do not try that at home!).

I decided, or my son decided, I should say, most accurately, that we should get a professional opinion, other than one of a professional liar or a professional PEG tube-sticker-back-inner. That would be my wife, of course.

She decided that I needed to go to the ER and I was imagining all of the things that happened last time and was not happy about that, but agreed that I needed to do that, before the wound covered up.

I will save you a little suspense: she rightly suspected that I would NOT go to the ER on my own. She was wrong this time. Finally. She was wrong. Woohoo! 🙂

I went back to the same ER that had taken me through the blood clot episode just last week, and they were their usual bright, friendly and efficient selves. In fact, the doctor put the tube in, exactly the tube that had come out, with all of the high dollar features ( :)) and I thought, man, this is awesome. Before I left, I did point out that I had what appeared to be a bit of leakage, and he said that was to be expected. No complaints from me.

And home I went!

Life is wonderful. Especially when you are having fun.

I ate through the tube, and all was cool. I do not mean that I ate THROUGH the tube. I mean that I used the tube through which to eat, in case you were confused. I could only continue to shake my head at the difference between one ER and the other. Until the thing fell out in my lap while I was in the CSN chat room. What the hell?

Mrs. Soccerfreaks? I woke my wife with, Um, Houston, I have a problem (she loves Tom Hanks, now that Kevin Costner dumped his wife for someone younger). She woke from her sleep, saw the thing, noted that the balloon had deflated, and took care of it. She found a saline syringe (the ER doc had used air, but I know that my previous OR experience included saline as well), did her testing, stuck it in, blew it up, and here we are. Safe and sound. Please be advised that we do not normally keep syringes of any kind hanging around the house. It happens that I had a staph infection, and, more recently, this last week, in fact, some Lovenox self-injections. We are a pharmacy here. But that is also part of the cancer experience for some of us, I know.

I would like to trim that down, and do so when I can, mindful now that pain management is a critical part of any successful campaign. Still… I like to trim it down. I’m just glad one of my pro athlete friends had left his gym bag here or I’m not sure we would have found the right sized syringe :).

“Did you ever know that you’re my hero?” (Can I sleep in the bedroom now?).

I did tell the ER doc that this was my last PEG tube. I am getting over it. I figure I have a year. But I am serious now. It will happen.

When I was operated on for head and neck cancer, back in October of 2005, they replaced half of my tongue, performed a radical neck dissection, and put a PEG tube into my torso.

The surgery I have described. Maybe I didn’t point out that they opened half of my lower face and that my teeth have never quite matched up since they put me back together. Maybe I have not mentioned that speech has been a problem, one that comes and goes, depending on the moisture levels in my mouth. I am certain, or nearly so, that I have talked about the problems with eating.

It seems that replacing half of my tongue was one of those great ideas in principle that doesn’t necessarily work out in practice. That is a work in progress. I eat. I eat salads that are diced finely and covered fairly well with dressing so that the dressing helps the tomatoes and onions and lettuce and such slide on down the gullet. I can out-eat you in the ice cream department. I enjoy experimenting with my condiments to make the ice cream seem new and exciting, but, to be honest, this bores me eventually. I eat yogurt. I eat pudding. All of this is rather bland when the people around you are sampling steak and shrimp and lobster and hamburgers fresh off the grill.

Some have asked me about pureeing stuff. Maybe I spelled that wrong. I mean to say, they mean to say, blending good stuff, mixing into a pudding in its own right and then eating it. Sort of like mashed potatoes with other stuff mixed in, which is how I actually started eating real food by the way.

I am sort of stubborn. I want to eat food the way I used to eat food, and am afraid that if I bend to the blender, I will accept it and live with it. I will not disagree with anyone who states that I am stupid in this regard.

But I have not given in, much to the chagrin of many, including my wife and, I am sure, a doctor or two. I have lost some weight over time (I needed to lose some weight, but not this much weight). But I am still either eating the way other people do or I am pouring my meals into a beaker and then pouring it into a funnel-type thing called a syringe which is planted in the PEG tube that goes into my stomach.

It is not as gross as it sounds. Or maybe it is and I have just grown used to it. The tube is under my shirt, of course, and I try to flatten it out so that people do not notice it. I do not attempt to eat with the tube in public, as I would consider this an affront to other diners, of course. I use it in my house, even when we have guests, but not in the dining room. I slink off to the den, turn on the TV or some music or both, and go for it while they are in the dining room eating.

There is some care involved with this. Before I go on, don’t get me wrong: one of the amazing things to me is that ALL cancer survivors have some things, some ideosyncrasies, they have to deal with, that the rest of the world never knows about, not even, perhaps, other survivors. I am not crying the blues. And I know that I am not alone. Anyone that has had cancer has some sort of interesting (for want of a better word) additional tasks to deal with after surviving.

I use the word ‘interesting’, I guess, because I find this most intriguing. People read about the chemotherapy and the radiation and the surgery and the prosthetics, and major sorts of issues like that, but they don’t read about, they don’t hear about, the little things that annoy us daily, that take up our time, that make us dependent, perhaps, on someone else, or slow us down, or cause us minor pain, or embarrass us, or make us frustrated, or make us angry with ourselves or with our world.

I cannot speak for the entire cancer survivorship. I know head and neck cancer, as it relates to me, and I know about lobectomies, as they relate to me, and I know how they affect me, in the large ways and in the small ways.

I have a PEG tube.

There are some issues surrounding a PEG tube that people are not aware of. For one, it is a tube of about a foot or so long, at least on the outside, implanted into your stomach through a hole, a wound, in what appears to me to be your chest, although my wife argues that it is not, and she knows better than me. Trust me on this: it looks like it is hanging out of my chest. This means that there is a wound, and that the wound must be cared for.

In my case, I have had the PEG tube for almost three years. To care for that wound, the hole in which the tube resides, I must care for it constantly. One of those minor annoyances. This means daily splashes of hydrogen peroxide, which is no big deal, and it means dressing changes, also no big deal.

It means that once a month my wife (in my case, because she is a wound care nurse) is burning off the flesh, the raw meat, that insists on pushing itself out of the wound. This hurts, but only modestly. Okay, it hurts. There are these Q-tip-like swabs she uses, only they are at least twice as large and the cotton ends are replaced by what look like corn dogs. Except that this end is the business end, of course, and it is silver nitrate or sulfer nitrate or some thing the Devil himself would have invented if he thought it would do no good for the world, and she rolls that around the wound area, and my flesh, the new meat, turns to ash, literally.

It hurts. But just a tad. And then I am good for awhile.

I still have to tend to it daily, and I still have to change the dressing (speaking of annoyances that others never know about) but that is cool.

I have to flush the tube after ‘eating’, which I do not do after each ‘feeding’ as I should. In fact, the tube gets clogged, and I know enough to use the plunger with about half of the syringe filled, pushing it down to force the Jevity down and into my stomach, and then shutting off the shuttlecock and pulling the plunger out to a very loud, shotgun-loud pop. This may be why my tubes do not stay in longer than they do, I have been told very recently.

Still, the PEG tube hangs in there. It does. I have had one for nearly three years, and only today had it replaced for the second time. That is probably better than you get from most athletes’ lifetime contracts these days.

The first time it happened, the losing of the tube, that is, I woke up in the morning, went out to the kitchen, got my two beakers of Jevity prepared (I mix each with water to help them go down without a plunger, for you fellow head/neck cancer survivors) and only as I reached for the tube to stick the syringe in (it’s really more like a funnel although it looks like a huge plastic syringe) did I realize that there was no PEG tube to grab.

I went to my bedroom first, for whatever reason, and there it was, lying on the floor. The problems with that are, or were, twofold. One, I was without my tube, obviously. Two, my tube was on the floor and likely no longer fit for insertion into my stomach. For all I knew, my dog had been eating it. Third (I never did learn to enumerate correctly) I had to keep that hole open until I got to a doctor, or they would have to create a new hole. I don’t know about you, but I feel that I was born with the perfect amount of holes (okay, the PEG tube hole is the exceptional addition) and I did not want any more holes in my body. I do not have earrings, I do not have…okay, let’s leave it at that. I like the holes I already have just fine and consider the purposeful creation of new ones to be primitive.

Primitive is alright. I am not being judgmental. I just want to seem like someone who has evolved. That’s all.

And I definitely didn’t want someone, regardless of expertise, drilling a new hole in my chest/abdomen (depending on who you talk to, and I would trust my wife on this one since she has been proving me wrong time and again lately (okay, can I sleep in the bedroom now?)). So I went to the ER at the BIG hospital, which is probably a bad idea, but that is where my wife works and where I trust the staff with completeness. On the other hand, being the big hospital, they tend to get the major accident victims from all hours of the night, the gunshot victims, the knifing victims, the domestic violence victims, the domestic accident victims, you know, everybody and their brother. They are busy.

A guy with a PEG tube that has fallen out tends to be pretty low on the triage pole (triage being, as I understand it, if they are dying, forget ’em, if they are dying but can be saved, they go first, if they are hurting really bad, and may bleed to death, move them up the list, if they are kids with injury, move them up too, if they are kids crying, move them up behind kids with serious injuries, if they complain a lot, regardless of age, they go next, and everyone else goes ahead of the twerp with the PEG tube out).

This is completely understandable.

Unless you are me.

To be completely forthright, they put me in a room pretty quickly, which pleased me, making me think that knowing my wife was paying dividends. Three hours later, I was beginning to have my doubts. It is one thing to MAKE it to a room (once you have paid), and quite another to get some medical attention. Some of you will think I am a jerk, if you do not already, when I say that I finally got dressed (in case you are wondering, I was dressed when I got there, too, and they insisted that I get undressed and put on the usual gown) and walked out to the front desk and told them I wanted my money back (co-pay).

They got really excited then. The policeman that sits out there started to nervously twitch at the strap on his holster (I wasn’t yelling or anything, I was just different, and policemen tend to find this threatening, I think). This was more than a year ago. I remind you, in case you have forgotten, that I was trying to get a new tube in place before the wound, the opening, of the old one, closed up completely, requiring new surgery.

When I demanded my money back, a guy magically appeared saying I was next on his list and he acted like a doctor. I should have known by the short jacket that he was a student or something, a lamb sent to the slaughter (I would have held him in front of me if the policeman had drawn and fired). I was assuaged and went back to the room and waited some more.

This was all a very bad idea on my part, because the doc showed up soon and was very um, agitated with me. She had LambBoy get a tube that in no way resembled my previous one, even though I had it with me, and she insisted she would have to make a new hole, until I literally poked my finger into my chest (abdomen, depending on who you are talking to, and I would go with my wife’s view if I were you (can I sleep in the bedroom NOW?)) and told her and showed her where it was.

So, they stuck the new tube in and were done with me.

Whereas my old tried and true was white and had lots of nice features like a shuttlecock and a bumper, this was a drab olive sort of snake that must have been at least a foot longer than my old one, if not more. It actually hung down beyond my crotch and gave me PEG tube envy. But I was cool with that. What did I know? They get the big bucks.

I must admit that even after two and a half years (and more) I have problems eating. I can eat a number of things, and do. But there are some things, a lot of things, that I have problems with. Naturally, I am not interested in the things I can eat. I am interested, extremely interested, in the things I cannot eat.

And so, while 30 years ago (okay, 40 years ago, maybe 45) the idea that I might survive on a diet of various ice creams and various toppings would have seemed like heaven, the case now is that commercials about hamburgers and steak are my personal pornography.

When they did their surgical thing to my tongue, as I think I’ve mentioned before, I did not get a transplant of Gene Simmons’ tongue (and I am frankly glad of that, for reasons we will not get into here). It is hard to reach the roof of my mouth with my tongue, and it is hard to toss food particles around from side to side as most people do without even realizing what they are doing.

No.

In my case, if things get lost on the right side of my interior culinary disposal unit(I just made up a euphemism, didn’t I? If you hear or see this anywhere other than here, please advise me so that I can sue the people who ripped me off) I lose them. And if they go up to the top, to the roof, ain’t no way. I have avoided breads as a result. There is something about bread. I have discovered quite by accident that the roof of the mouth is a magnet for bread. I have decided to call it the Soccerfreaks Effect, and some day kids will be reading about it, and me, in their science classes. Or, perhaps, in those health classes where they learn about the five types of food…or is it four…or nine? I am not up to date on that. Back then we had …. well, if you are young, you don’t want to know…and if you are old, you already know. Test a week from today.

Food groups. That is what we are talking about here.

One of them sticks to the roof of my mouth whenever I try to ingest it. They did not teach me THAT in grade school, I assure. Had they done so, there is at least a marginal chance that I would have avoided the surgery to my tongue and opted for a happy life of eating well until the day that the cancer consumed me.

Irony there: I would consume until I was consumed. Just for you folks who do not detect irony immediately, and I know you are out there.

There are other issues. Of course. If I eat a salad, that baby had better be really sliced and diced. The fun thing with that is that I can use any number of dressings on it, as long as they facilitate the ‘sliding down the throat’ effect, and each time, it is a different meal!

And there are potatoes. It doesn’t matter what you do to potatoes (am I pulling a Dan Quayle here and misspelling potatoes? Because if I am, I don’t care. He had way more help than I have, Google notwithstanding.) The thing about potatoes is that they are always soft on the inside, even when your wife bakes them to a crisp; even when your son fries them to brittleness. There is softness in there somewhere, and, besides, the crispy effect is beneficial, after all. If you are a head and neck cancer survivor, you should find eventually that you LIKE crisp potatoes and crisp chips and that sort of thing, because you can feel them! And if that doesn’t float your boat, there is this: you can add almost any legitimate vegetable to mashed potatoes, mix it in, and the mashies will help it slide down, as long as you are not trying to take down an entire asparagus spear at a single swallow.

Potatoes are good. I like the soups, actually. You can put anything you want in them, given certain limiting parameters regarding spices and chunks of liver and flava beans, and get it down, if you work at it. Most of you. Most of us.

And there is yogurt. Even a 100-year old Russian woman with no teeth can get yogurt down, at least according to the commercials from back in the day, and how do you think she got to be a 100 years old, anyway?

But you don’t need advice. I get carried away, as you know.

This is about an event.

You see, I have been trying to eat more, ever since the beginning. When I read (here!) that others are eating better than I am I get sort of frustrated about that and I have to learn more about their conditions and then I develop rationalizations for why they can do something I cannot do. Sometimes it is because they have, oh, I don’t know, a tongue!

Okay, that is the main one :).

Sometimes I wonder if having the tongue surgery was a good idea. Have I mentioned that? We tend to have doubts about some of the things we do after the fact, in general, I mean, and of course, specifically when it comes to our cancer treatment, especially those of us who trust our doctors blindly and irrationally and just say “Go for it, dude!”

That’s sort of what I did.

I still trust that I made the right decision, more accurately, that THEY made the right decision, but I have begun to waffle a bit. I admit it.

It goes like this: If you could eat normally for five more years and then die, as opposed to all of this, would you? Well, he** yeah!. Well, he** no!

And on we go. It goes both ways, as some of you, maybe most of you, know. Some days you feel like a nut; some days you don’t :).

I am not sure which is which, decision-wise, but in the end, I am glad to be here.

So we can leave that for the moment and get to this: my wife lives with me (I know, I am amazed as well!) as does my son (again, I can only express sincere astonishment). We no longer have family meals, since our schedules vary so much and, especially, because I am not going to be eating with them anyway, normally. We have big meals for holidays, and I skip those, or attend briefly, just enough to hypocritically bless the meal and take a bite or two and leave before they become absolutely omnivorously cantankerous over their plates, and that’s about it.

When my wife or son comes into the den with a plate of this or that, I have this apparently annoying habit of going to them and sniffing their food.

I am not being territorial, trust me :).

Food smells so frigging good that I HAVE to see it, and smell it, and ask them what is in it. I am wondering if there is some possibility that I might be able to EAT it. And usually, almost always, I am disappointed.

Spicy is out. Almost all meat is out: chicken and pork are too dry, beef is too chewy. Um…that IS all of the food groups, is it not?

So, no nachos. No chili. No burgers. No perogis (sp?). Not much of anything.

I am not feeling sorry for myself, trust me. But today, my family, that is, my wife and my son, eventually told me that my sniffing their food was really gross. This happened because I asked my son if I could take a bite of his personal concoction, a chicken sandwich consisting of chicken (who’d have guessed?), mayo, melted cheese, and bbq sauce ON A BUN.

In the past, he has been reticent, okay, defiant, in not permitting such an act. I figured that he really thought, and I’m serious here, folks, that he might somehow get cancer if he ate food after I took a chunk out of it. Really.

This time, he said “Go for it.” I said, I mean, I want to take a bite out of the SANDWICH??? And he said, ‘Yeah, do whatcha gotta do.”

My boy is growing up.

He had compressed the sandwich. You know? I mean, he had squeezed the bun parts together pretty tightly, and this was the only way I had a chance. My jaws don’t separate too well. They have a name for it and it begins with a T, but I’m beyond that, long beyond that. Still, the compression made this at least possible.

I’d already had a morsel of the chicken, found it dry as usual, but somehow processed a bit, easier to get down, so I had some hope. And even if I failed, there would always be Paris.

I mean, there would always be the TASTE, even if I had to regurgitate it (cancer can be gross, folks, definitely not for the light-hearted).

Let me elaborate now, before I forget: after all was said and done, and my son was gone, I said to my wife that only in the last couple of weeks has Ry been allowing me to try his food, and she said, THEN, that, well, they both find it gross that I stick my nose in their food, and they would rather have my spit in it that my boogers, and I am not making that up.

Of course she disappoints me, but she is my wife. What am I going to do?

I took as large a bite as I could of the chicken sandwich a la Ry, and managed to pull off about the same amount as a two-month old, but it was bread AND chicken AND bbq sauce AND mayo: it was a COMBO. And I got it all down.

I am not dancing naked on the roof of my house because I did that, of course. I am dancing on the roof of my house because I CAN.

But you get the idea. It was a big moment for me. I see big things in my future. I may run for president. Or even try out for American Idol. As ZZ Top sings…’I’m nationwide’.

I used to rant like this only after really good sex. What have I become? 🙂